Monday, April 25, 2011

Another tragic loss to the ravages of time, Mick Mercer once referred to these kids as “lost Goth giants”, thereby contradicting his own earlier statement that the rise of Goth “can truthfully be traced only as far back as the rise of Bauhaus” (Mercer, The Gothic Rock Black Book, Omnibus Press, 1988).

Gloria Mundi started coming to public attention supporting early John Foxx-era Ultravox! Indeed, saxophonist C.C. actually worked as a session musician on the track “Hiroshima Mon Amour” on the second Ultravox! album Ha!-Ha!-Ha! (Island Records, 1977), and bassist Ice had previously played in an outfit known as Yours with early Ultravox! guitarist Stevie Shears.

Highly theatrical in their live performances, Gloria Mundi stood apart from the majority of their post-punk peers in being driven more by a sense of gloom than by any more nihilistic tendencies, a noose reportedly gracing their stage on regular occasions.

First materializing on vinyl with the Fight Back! single (RCA, 1978), the astonishing musical document that is I, Individual was their first full length release. Complex and diverse, the album ranges from the outright punk of “Split Personality” through to longer labyrinthine arrangements that suggest the band may have been more than passing fans of Eno-era Roxy Music. A strong flavour of performance art remains throughout, providing a thread that would later be picked up by early Dark Cabaret artists, most noticeably Sex Gang Children.

I-Individual

The Pack

Split Personality

Perhaps too far left of field for their time to gain widespread acceptance, the true legacy of Gloria Mundi remains as being the nurturing uncles of the then nascent Bauhaus, inspiring the latter as their support band to adopt a more refined image that would become the template of the ten million Goth acts that would follow in their wake.

Several more singles and a second album, The Word is Out (RCA, 1979) would follow, before Gloria Mundi would dissolve, leaving Eddie and Sunshine to continue as the imaginatively named Eddie and Sunshine who released several singles and at least one LP, Perfect Strangers in 1983, described as “synth-pop” through Survival Records. Sunshine continues to work under the name Sunshine Gray.

I think we should let Mick Mercer have the final word here, writing in the introduction to his self published (?) photo book of Gloria Mundi : “Indisputably the first Goth band”.

The line-up of Gloria Mundi seems a little dubious. While everyone agrees on Eddie and Sunshine as core members, there is little consensus on anyone else. Who was actually in the band and who were hired guns along for the ride seems to depend largely on who you read.

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.